Stanford Women Collect 18th Team Title With Comeback Win over Oklahoma State; Virginia Repeats as Men's Champion; Individual Draws Released
No. 15 seed Stanford has been bringing the drama from the second round on, winning four 4-3 matches, including in today's final against No. 12 seed Oklahoma State.
After dropping the doubles point and going down 3-1 in singles, Stanford fought back, getting three-set wins from freshmen Caroline Lampl and Melissa Lord at lines 5 and 6 to pull even. At line 2, Taylor Davidson, who had won the last match on against Texas A&M to get Stanford to Tulsa, and won the last match on against Florida in the round of 16, again found herself with all the pressure, this time in the match that would decide the 2016 NCAA team title.
Davidson served for the match against Oklahoma State's Vladica Babic at 5-2 and 5-4, didn't convert either time, then broke for a third chance to serve it out. Davidson went up 40-30, but didn't get the first match point. A long rally on the deciding point ended when Babic scooped a forehand wide, and Stanford had its 18th national championship.
Bobby Knight has video of the final service game, as well as an article on the match, at College Tennis Today. The Stanford recap is here.
The men's final between top seed Virginia and No. 11 seed Oklahoma was delayed by lightning and ultimately moved indoors. Virginia took the doubles point and won four of six first sets. Oklahoma pushed back, but Virginia was able to keep the match on its terms, getting wins from JC Aragone, Thai Kwiatkowski and Henrik Wiersholm to earn a 4-1 win, the same score of last year's final between the two teams.
The individual tournament begins on Wednesday, with Hayley Carter of North Carolina the top seed in the women's singles and Mikael Torpegaard of Ohio State the top seed in the men's singles. The women's doubles draw is here; the men's doubles draw is here.
=======================================
NCAA Division I Women’s Final
May 24, 2016
Tulsa, Oklahoma
#15 Stanford (20-5) def. #12 Oklahoma State (29-5), 4-3
Head Coaches: Chris Young (Oklahoma State) and Lele Forood (Stanford)
Doubles
1. #43 Maria Alvarez/Kelsey Laurente (Oklahoma State) def. #5 Taylor Davidson/Caroline Doyle (Stanford), 6-3
2. #54 Viktoriya Lushkova/Carla Tur Mari (Oklahoma State) vs. #31 Melissa Lord/Carol Zhao (Stanford), 5-5 DNF
3. #79 Katarina Adamovic/Vladica Babic (Oklahoma State) def. Krista Hardebeck/Caroline Lampl (Stanford), 6-1 Order of Finish: 3, 1
Singles
1. #47 Katarina Adamovic (Oklahoma State) def. #25 Carol Zhao (Stanford), 6-4, 7-5
2. #46 Taylor Davidson (Stanford) def. #44 Vladica Babic (Oklahoma State), 3-6, 7-5, 7-5
3. #66 Viktoriya Lushkova (Oklahoma State) def. #67 Caroline Doyle (Stanford), 4-6, 6-4, 6-1
4. #100 Krista Hardebeck (Stanford) def. Kelsey Laurente (Oklahoma State), 6-4, 6-4
5. Caroline Lampl (Stanford) def. Katarina Stresnakova (Oklahoma State), 4-6, 6-3, 6-3
6. Melissa Lord (Stanford) def. Carla Tur Mari (Oklahoma State), 6-7(6), 6-2, 6-2
Order of Finish: 4, 1, 3, 5, 6, 2
================================
NCAA Division I Men’s Final
May 24, 2016
Tulsa, Oklahoma
#1 Virginia(30-4) def. #11 Oklahoma(20-11) 4-1
Head Coaches: Brian Boland (Virginia) and John Roddick (Oklahoma)
Doubles
1. #4 Luca Corinteli/Ryan Shane (Virginia) def. #24 Axel Alvarez/Andrew Harris (Oklahoma), 7-5
2. Alex Ghilea/Spencer Papa (Oklahoma) def. #16 Thai-Son Kwiatkowski/Mac Styslinger (Virginia), 7-5
3. Collin Altamirano/J.C. Aragone (Virginia) def. Andre Biro/Austin Siegel (Oklahoma), 6-1
Order of Finish: 3, 2, 1
Singles
1. #97 Andrew Harris (Oklahoma) def. #8 Ryan Shane (Virginia), 7-6(3), 6-0
2. #25 Axel Alvarez (Oklahoma) vs. #33 Collin Altamirano (Virginia), 7-5, 4-3 DNF
3. #9 Thai-Son Kwiatkowski (Virginia) def. #82 Spencer Papa (Oklahoma), 6-4, 6-4
4. #78 Alexander Ritschard (Virginia) vs. #61 Alex Ghilea (Oklahoma), 6-1, 1-6, 5-2 DNF
5. #110 J.C. Aragone (Virginia) def. Florin Bragusi (Oklahoma), 6-3, 6-4
6. Henrik Wiersholm (Virginia) def. Andre Biro (Oklahoma), 6-2, 7-6(2)
Order of Finish: 5, 1, 3, 6
12 comments:
I'm a huge Stanford fan, however I did not feel like their win was more exciting. I felt that no ad scoring made the outcome more about chance and less definitive. Davidson was tiring in the third, would the outcome have been the same with ad scoring?
Tennis has become more about chance than about talent and fitness. In Florida, the 10 point third set tiebreaker is viewed by many as a crap shoot. American tennis will continue to fall behind as matches are shortened and the cost increases (USTA & ITA). True coaches who are interested in developing players are at a loss regarding how tennis has become butchered by ITA, USTA. Tennis is the one college sport that IS NOT considered to be a step towards professional. Football, Basketball, Baseball, Golf, Track and Field are all college sports that do a far better job of handing off college athletes prepared for professional play.
Yeah Yeah I get it, it's about the academics, that's why UCLA just signed for 250 million with a sports company, to further promote the academics.
Tennis needs to wake up and fast or they'll simply disappear. A marathon is 26 miles for a reason, tennis had win by two in place for a reason. Will there be in follow up by the NCAA that there were more viewers, that the excitement scale went up. No, the people that made the no ad decision, probably watched neither final yesterday and will continue to look for coaching puppets and announcers to promote how exciting it was (not).
It is not real tennis, simple as that. It is a manufactured game now. The best teams do not win because it is skill combined with luck, rather than skill combined with fitness and endurance which is what a sport is supposed to be. Call it exciting, but don't simply call it tennis.
USTA introduced QuickStart a few years ago for the little ones (which ended up being a trademark violation btw), we can call this Quickend, Quick-End or Quickened College Tennis. QCT, there ya go. But it is not real tennis where the strongest team claims the crown. To me, there is forever an asterick by the champions that win QCT versus those that came before, when it was really tennis.
CBS sports taped the finals for replay at a later date. There was a CBS banner hanging at one end of the courts. During the women's final, CBS sports was showing live the first round of the AAC conference baseball tournament. Truly hard to believe that event draws more viewers than a women's final would have. How many of you even know what AAC stands for? It would embarrassingly seem that almost every possible college sporting event garners more LIVE interest than even National Championship tennis. Though, it defies logic
Tyler - What are your thoughts on the Stanford top player not being part of the team for the entire team season?
College football has 12 minute quarters, NFL has 15 minute quarters. college basketball has 20 minute halfs, NBA has 12 minute quarters. Some college baseball games (2nd game of double headers or make-up games) are 7 innings, MLB is 9. College golf plays 3 rounds, pro plays 4. Sometimes track runs an 8k, pros run 10k (although I'm not as familiar with the details). Just something to think about. College tennis plays no-ad 2 out of 3 set singles, plus a set of no-ad doubles. pro plays 2 out of 3 set singles, regular scoring without doubles. Another question would be, was college tennis producing a lot of top-100 pros during regular scoring? McEnroe's era maybe had the most. They played no-ad. But also 2 out of 3 doubles. So difficult to say if there is a correlation of college scoring system to pro development.
I have never seen an NCAA tournament where the champion team does not have one player in the singles competition. Last year Carol Zhao was the runnerup and yet she is not playing now. She is playing doubles so it could not be because of injury. She is ranked 25th so her rankings would be high enough to qualify. What gives?
I also don't like the shortening of games and in doubles taking away 2 of 3 sets to an 8 game set and now down to 6 game set. Is it the coaches that put in these rules? I guess they just don't want to work too long. It was too long a day for them. It never bothered great coaches in the past like the late George Toley of USC.
I think I heard a reason cutting down the length of matches was for TV. That's funny since the NCAA women's final wasn't on TV and hasn't been the last few years. While there is more college sports on TV than ever, the NCAA women's team final that used to be televised is no longer.
Carol Zhao did not play enough regular season matches to qualify for NCAA singles competition
Colette - Why would the minimum matches for team not be the same as singles? Thanks, Jim
That's a question for the NCAA committee, not me
@314159 xdia - I think it's because players can often have less doubles matches w/ the same partner due to switching around throughout the season.
The reason for shortening matches was to get fan interest up, which may or may happen. College tennis matches used to be way to long, changing the doubles from 2 out of 3 to pro set to one set makes a huge difference. When I played college tennis, matches usually lasted 5 or 6 hours which was way to long. All you needed was one of singles and one of doubles matches to be a long three setter, and match lasted 6 hours. We also didn't abandon doubles matches once the match was decided, so we would all be waiting for the last doubles match to finish before we could leave. THE MATCHES LASTED TO LONG
This site is so funny, people blame no ad for every possible issue in college tennis, it is really laughable. Very few players in college tennis will ever make a living on the pro tour, and it has nothing to do with no ad scoring, its because very few people make a living on the pro tour.
Alex, I am not doubting your observation, but we did not have any 5 or 6 hours matches here this week under regular scoring, warm up and break formats. I too prefer 1 doubles point from 3 matches and an 8 game pro set, but 5 or 6 hours seems unusual, not usual.
Post a Comment